


Death Wish

by the_glow_worm



Category: Darker Than Black
Genre: Ambiguous Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, No Plot/Plotless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 14:20:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11337264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_glow_worm/pseuds/the_glow_worm
Summary: On a night illuminated only by the flickering light of Earth-2, Misaki and the Tokyo Special Investigative Unit find BK-201 fighting for his life on a rooftop.





	Death Wish

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written a long time ago as the first part of a 14-chapter post-series longfic. It looks as if that will never get done, so I'm posting this as a one-shot, since it stands up pretty well on its own. Please enjoy.

It was a four-way fight, and it was all going to hell.

 

As near as Misaki could figure, there were two separate groups of contractors in the fray: how many on either side, or even which contractors were on the same team, she could not begin to guess. There was at least one invisible contractor and one—perhaps two—power mimickers, and a shapeshifter as well. All around the frantic fight the Tokyo Special Investigative Unit perched on the surrounding rooftops like wary crows, waiting for the birds of prey to finish their hunt.

 

And there, like a tiger in a trap, the sole prize in this bloody melee, BK-201.

 

Li.

 

It had been a year since she saw him last, but she would recognize him anywhere. Earth-2 was full tonight, and it lit the scene almost as brightly as the long-gone moon. She could see every detail. His hair was longer, but not by much. He had a tear in his bulletproof coat, and she wondered what could have made it. There was a fresh scar on his cheek.

 

And he wore no mask.

 

As she watched, he dropped off the side of a building to evade a group of contractors, flinging out a cord almost randomly while in freefall. A duo of flyers had been waiting for this moment: swooping away from their opponents, they sliced through the cord in a metallic flash. The traffic below them honked frantically as Li plummeted down, but he, as though he had been waiting for it, flung out another wire. It wrapped around the leg of one of the flyers, dragging him down. Instinctively the contractor grabbed onto his partner, who drew his knife and sliced the man’s throat rather than fall to earth with him. The contractor dropped out of the sky; Li was already swinging away to another rooftop, the battle swarming around him again like matter around a newly forming planet. Soon they would begin to disperse, drawn away from the nucleus by their own fights, but for the moment all the contractors were concentrated on that single rooftop.

 

“Is it time?” asked Saitou.

 

“It is.”

 

The great advantage of humanity, Misaki thought to herself, was cooperation. When the snipers fired gas pellets into the heart of the chaos, mobilization teams 2, 3, and 4 swung immediately into action: one four-man team jumping directly into the fray, the others, further away, literally swinging in from wires. They had BK-201 to thank for that little trick. Gas masks, heat-sensing goggles and thermal markings on their uniforms would give them advantage over their opponents, momentarily blind and gagging from the gas. Their bullets and knives were coated with nerve poison. It should be a certain conclusion.

 

But with contractors, and especially with BK-201, things were never certain. That was, after all, why mobilization team 1 was being held back.

 

Out of the rising cloud of gas lone figures emerged in all directions. The other flyer, the throat-opener, shot out of the cloud, speeding from the battle and not looking back. A teenage girl in black jumped straight off the side of the building, much as Li had done earlier, digging her knives into the brick to slow her descent. A member of the mobilization team went flying: a lucky throw had flung him off the rooftop. His frantically thrown cord missed a nearby balcony by a foot. His head burst as he hit the now-deserted street.

 

A young man, shirtless, threw himself off the roof. He had grown a thin flap of skin beneath his arms, and he glided on them shakily.

 

“Looks like we had a shape-shifter after all,” said Saitou, signaling to the snipers. The bullet hit him directly between the shoulder blades. He let out a cry of pain and fell. Misaki looked up: stars were falling.

 

It was going smoothly. She only saw the thin black cord because she had been waiting for it: it shot out of the smoke and wrapped around a rooftop antenna with uncanny accuracy. There was only one person capable of such a shot from complete darkness, and he soon appeared, swinging out into the night.

 

“Go,” she said to mobilization team 1, but they needed no such order. It was exactly what they had been waiting for. They swung after him on their own cords, crisscrossing paths in the dark. They were gone.

 

Misaki turned her attention to the rooftop, and saw with dismay that the smoke was clearing. The wind had picked up when it wasn’t supposed to. Could there be a weather-controller hiding somewhere? She made a note of it in the back of her mind.

 

Without the gas, the masks and heat goggles were a liability more than anything else. The men removed them. Of the twelve men who had leapt onto the rooftop, there were nine left. It was not a bad number. There were six contractors left standing on the rooftop, out of fifteen or so to begin with. Seven, if one was invisible—no, there he was among the fallen bodies, slowly regaining color and form like a camera coming back into focus. Six who had survived an attack by police specialists. Misaki analyzed them, one by one, mind working quickly.

 

One was a skinny, harmless looking middle-aged man. His skin was invulnerable; that he was still standing was not a surprise. His suit showed three holes from bullets that had simply bounced off. He would have to be noosed. Another must have gone intangible as soon as the gas descended; he stood half-in half-out of a tall, muscular woman. She had bullet wounds: quite a few of them, in fact, but they closed and healed as Misaki watched. The fourth was the power mimic, a chubby pre-teen. She must have borrowed someone else’s ability just in time. In the very middle of the roof a young man had raised a protective cocoon of concrete that now cracked apart and fell: he stood glaring at them all. His ability had run out.

 

The sixth had avoided her bullets by the simple measure of destroying them.

 

Misaki was not sure how to categorize her ability. Saitou had dubbed it “the whirlwind of death” and that seemed oddly fitting. Within two feet of her, objects began to fall to pieces. Bullets disintegrated before they had gone one inch. They had seen what happened to the people who entered that field: it was ugly. She looked at the policemen, wordless. There was blood trickling out of her mouth; there was blood at her feet. Misaki did not think she needed to tell her men that she was by far the most dangerous.

 

She could see Captain Takeshi on the roof, looking tense. The contractors were outnumbered, tired, and in conflict with each other. They were, on the other hand, contractors, and the police had just officially lost the element of surprise.

 

“Be careful,” she mouthed under her breath, and could see him growling it to his men.

 

Her headpiece buzzed. It was Arawashi from mobilization unit 1.

 

“Commander, we lost him,” he said.

 

“What do you mean, you lost him?” she demanded. “You were right on his trail!”

 

“He just—disappeared. Went down a blind alley and vanished. If we could requisition the helicopter—“

 

“It wouldn’t do any good,” sighed Misaki. “Once he’s gone, he’s gone. Just get back here, we have a situation.”

 

There was silence on the other end.

 

“Did you hear me?” she said. “Team 1, return and assist. Do you copy?”

 

“I copy,” said Arawashi in a strangled voice. “But Commander, you should know. We’re not the only ones headed your way.”

 

“What?”

 

“BK-201,” he said. “He’s returning to the fight.”

 

Misaki didn’t stop to listen anymore. Her finger found the broadcast button on her headset and jabbed at it.

 

“Takeshi!” she burst out. “BK-201 is advancing on your position, do you copy? Repeat, BK-201 is advancing on your position, do you—”

 

“He’s _what_?” said Takeshi in disbelief. “Mother _fu_ —”

 

“Shut up,” she said urgently. There were faint sounds coming from Arawashi’s frequency. Frowning, she turned up the volume. It was a strange, crackling buzz only barely discernible beneath the static. Only when the screams began did she realize what it was.

 

Electricity.

 

She switched back to Takeshi. “He just took out Arawashi’s squad,” she said without preamble. She considered her options. “Stay on the rooftop,” she ordered, forcing certainty into her voice. “If he’s hunting us we stand a better chance if we stick together.”

 

“And the other contractors?”

 

Misaki smiled grimly. “Against the Black Reaper? It’s in their best self-interest to fight on our side.”

 

Takeshi almost began to laugh, but the scant humor died on his face. “Did you hear that?” he asked sharply.

 

“What?”

 

“There was something…” he said, looking out into the night. Veteran of a hundred battles with contractors, he almost sounded eager. But then, he had never fought BK-201.

 

Misaki strained her eyes. What had he heard? Where was Li? Clouds were flickering faster and thicker across the face of Earth-2, blurring light into shadow, until finally the earthlight was extinguished altogether. There was only the light of the streetlamps far below, and a few faint stars far above. She was distantly, irritably aware that her heart was pounding faster.

 

“Show yourself,” she whispered, silent even to her own ears. But he must have heard her.

 

A wire came snaking out of the darkness and coiled around the neck of the tall self-healer, dragging her with shocking speed off the side of the building. Misaki saw the exact moment her neck snapped, death coming too quickly for any healing factor to make the difference. The other contractors turned and stared into the darkness. The policemen did the same, hands tightening on their guns. Dealing with contractors was one thing. Dealing with the Black Reaper was quite another.

 

The second wire came on the heels of the first, but from the other direction. If it hadn’t been BK-201, Misaki would have said it was impossible. They only saw the attack when the middle-aged man, the invulnerable one, wrapped his fingers around the cord tightening his neck and choked out a wailing cry. Then he, too, was dragged off into the night. One of the policemen panicked and raked the darkness with bullets.

 

For a moment nothing happened, and Misaki could scarcely breathe. The man lowered his gun, looking dazed, and a knife spun out and took him square in the throat.

 

Chaos erupted on the rooftop as BK-201 himself descended, his coat flapping wildly, points of light flying from his hands. No, not light. Knives. Glinting in the light of the stars, they buried themselves in the chests of two of her men. Misaki stifled a cry. They were going to be fine. They had been wearing bulletproof vests, hadn’t they? But they slumped to the ground like dead men do, bleeding from their wounds. They did not react when BK-201 retrieved his knives from their bodies.

 

Takeshi roared and came at him with his own knives bared, but the contractor slipped away from him like a shadow. The rest of the men had likewise drawn their knives. BK-201 had always been a little too good at dodging bullets.

 

Three of the men came charging at him together. He feinted left and rolled right, slicing open a man’s leg to the bone as he went with effortless, almost casual grace. BK-201 rose to his feet almost directly beside the young concrete-manipulator, who was digging through his pockets frantically. It took Misaki a full second longer than it should have to realize what he was doing.

 

“Stop him!” she ordered over the headset, but it was too late. He had managed to stuff a blade of grass into his mouth, and the rooftop became a roiling sea. Concrete rose up around BK-201, trapping him to the thigh.  Contractors and police alike were thrown flat. One of the policemen had been knocked unconscious, as had the young power-mimic. A policeman struggled to his knees and drew his gun. Turning sharply in his direction, the young contractor made a swift motion with his hands. A rocky wave swallowed him whole.

 

But he had made a classic mistake. He had turned his back on BK-201.

 

The contractor swayed where he stood. The double point of a knife emerged from his solar plexus, twisted, and withdrew. He fell without a sound.

 

Takeshi seized the opportunity. Drawing his gun, he motioned his remaining men to their feet. Misaki counted them: one drowned in concrete, one knocked out, three cut down by BK-201’s knives, only four including Takeshi himself left in any condition to fight, and one of those limping and hurt. On the other hand, BK-201 was trapped and unable to move. This was as close to a fair fight as they were ever going to get.

 

Out of the corner of her eye, Misaki noticed movement—one of the contractors was rising slowly to her feet, concrete dust swirling. The roof around her feet was as flat and still as the surface of a lake. Her eyes took in the scene: the police, the bodies, and BK-201. With a deliberate pace she made her way towards them. Concrete wreckage shriveled before her. Legs and fingers were sheared off from the dead and wounded.

 

Misaki didn’t need to shout a warning. Takeshi had already noticed her. They could not fight her with what they had—they needed a bomb, or fire. Next time she would use the knockout gas, Misaki resolved, civilian collateral damage be damned—

 

“His eyes,” said Saitou urgently, and Misaki turned to look at BK-201.

 

He was using his power. Misaki tensed, but the telltale glow was not accompanied by electricity, or any physical manifestation of any kind. She squinted. The radiation seemed subtly brighter on the concrete that was encasing his legs, but it was hard to be sure. What was he doing?

 

On the roof, Takeshi roared something at his men, who hastened to fire their guns, not daring to get close enough to use knives.

 

To her surprise, he offered no retaliation, only raising his arms to protect his face. She had not expected him to be able to flee or evade, trapped as he was, but to simply take their bullets was—unexpected. She swallowed. If a stray bullet found a hole in his armor or bounced the wrong way, he could really be killed. She hadn’t been ready for that possibility.

 

From Saitou’s other side, one of the snipers caught her eye in a silent question. She shook her head. If bullets from Takeshi’s range couldn’t take Li out, it was no use running up expenses on long-distance bullets. Saitou frowned at the decision, but Misaki ignored it. “Put in a call to Astronomics,” she said instead. “I want to know who was active tonight.”

 

The policemen stumbled back as the other contractor neared, but they had not needed to worry. She was heading straight for BK-201. Misaki’s pulse jumped. His coat would not protect him from her deadly aura.

 

Li looked up, putting down his arms. The two contractors regarded each other dispassionately.

 

“I’ve never gotten used to it,” muttered Saitou.

 

“To what?” she asked, only half paying attention.

 

“The way contractors can look at each other,” he said, “and they know one of them is going to die, and neither of them give a damn. It’s not human.”

 

Misaki didn’t comment. She had known contractors who had shown abject fear in the face of death and known humans who didn’t blink while staring up the barrel of a gun. More and more she thought that “human” was an arbitrary and convenient label.

 

But then again, she thought, watching the female contractor cock her head, the inhuman glow of radiation in her eyes, maybe not. The absolute flatness of her expression was eerie. She had not paused in her movement, but now Li was struggling to get away, hacking at the concrete trapping his legs with his knives. The sheer futility of the endeavor made her swallow. This was wrong. This was BK-201, the Black Reaper, who was meant to be swift and graceful and untouchable, who came and went like a lightning strike against a black sky. It looked wrong, fundamentally wrong, to see him trapped like a common man.

 

The contractor came closer, closer. The bullets that had bounced off Li’s coat quivered and burst in her presence. The edges of her power caught at the body of the dead concrete-manipulator, reducing him to a fine bloody spray. She neither slowed nor hurried, keeping to her stately pace. The blood that had been seeping out of her mouth marked a red trail down the lines of her jaw.

 

Li looked perfectly calm. He raised his knives and again brought them down against the concrete.

 

But this time the concrete shattered, falling apart in huge chunks. The contractor’s eyes widened. Misaki watched her strain to move faster and realized that her slowness had not been deliberate. Her power must be dragging her down somehow. But even if she had moved as fast as Captain Takeshi had, she could never have caught up. BK-201 was gone before the last piece of concrete had finished falling.

 

From her vantage point, Misaki could practically hear Takeshi cursing. The contractor said nothing, but she turned her hollow eyes on him and took a leisurely step. Fresh blood ran out the corners of her mouth.

 

“Get out of there!” Misaki ordered tersely.

 

Takeshi paused, and spoke into his own headset.

 

“There must be some way to take her,” he said.

 

“I’ll send a helicopter with a flamethrower,” growled Misaki. “Go, now!”

 

“I know I can think of something,” he argued. “She’s slow enough we can avoid her indefinitely. She has a weakness, like all contractors do. If we could—”

 

“You have wounded,” Misaki pointed out flatly. “How are they supposed to avoid her?”

 

Takeshi hesitated, but only for a moment. He opened his mouth again, but whether to argue or agree, Misaki never had a chance to find out. A croaking yelp had caught their attentions. The sound was more of surprise than pain, and it took them both a moment to see that the contractor had stopped dead and yet another moment to see why: the double point of BK-201’s knife rising from the curve of her boot.

 

“Mother _fuck_ er,” said Takeshi, in the tone of one professional admiring another’s work. If Misaki was given to cursing, she might have said the same.

 

He had thrown the knife straight up through a solid foot of concrete, impaling her from the only direction she was not defending herself: down. Her eyes widened in realization and she screamed, her hair standing on end, her whole body shaking, her skin flickering with lightning.

 

It seemed to go on for a long time, and at the end of it she lay very still. Earth-2 emerged from its shroud of clouds, exposing the scene in perfect detail. Her scarified tongue was lolling out of her gaping mouth, evidence of the prices she had paid for her power.

 

In the silence that followed, BK-201 ghosted back into their midst and raised his knives.

 

“I don’t understand,” said Misaki. “Why does he keep coming back? What is he after?”

 

“From the looks of it,” remarked Saitou, “a fight.”

 

He wasn’t the only one. Takeshi grinned, incredibly, and hefted his gun. The three remaining officers rushed to back him up.

 

“ _Disengage!_ ” Misaki gritted into her headset. “Do you copy? You can’t win against him! Disengage, damn you! It’s no use,” she said, throwing down the headset. BK-201 was already rushing to get within striking range. Takeshi calmly fired his huge combat pistol. The bullet came within an inch of BK-201’s hair, but it might as well have been a mile. Without so much as a break in his stride, he swerved directly at a young policeman who had come unwarily close, his blade rising up. The officer cried out, reflexively blocking the strike. The knife bit into his arm, not deep, but deep enough: he jerked suddenly and fell to the ground, smoking. If he lived, the scar from the knife would heal, but the scar from the electricity would not. On balance, Misaki very much doubted that he would live.

 

Takeshi fired again, but BK-201 was already halfway to his next victim. This one was quicker; he actually managed to get off a shot while the dagger was plunging toward his chest. Misaki couldn’t see whether it missed or bounced off his coat. It hardly mattered in any case. BK-201 was still alive, which meant another of her men was about to die. It was a bitter taste in her mouth.

 

And then a ghost came out of the policeman.

 

Misaki blinked, disbelieving her eyes. No, it was not a ghost, but she might have preferred one. It was a contractor. He passed through the startled officer’s solid flesh as if it were made of colored smoke, he himself gray and insubstantial. The red of his eyes was the only spot of vivid color in his entire form.

 

His hand reached out past—no, _through_ —BK-201’s knife and grasped for his heart. BK-201 stumbled back, and the gray contractor came with him, gaining color and form slightly, the tip of his hand firmly locked in BK-201’s chest, who made a choking sound and dropped his knives. The contractor dug his hand further into Li’s flesh, seeking his heart. Policeman shouted wordlessly, leveling their guns.

 

One of Li’s hands made a claw against his chest, as if scrabbling against the pain. His eyes flashed red and sudden lightning convulsed them both in equal measure, passing from Li’s flesh to the other contractor’s through the bridge of his solid hand.

 

Li shook in silence. The gray contractor screamed, his eyes rolling up into his head. In the translucent parts of his body, Misaki could see electricity dance along his nervous system. Lightning arced between them both and then Li, too, began to scream under the pain of his own power.

 

The screaming stopped abruptly and with it, the lightning. Misaki tried not to betray her nervousness. They were both still, very still, and then the gray contractor, in full color at last, slowly toppled backwards. He hit the ground, solid in death.

 

The contractor’s hand pulled loose of Li’s flesh as he fell, with a horrible sound and leaving a horrible wound. Still standing, somehow, Li seemed to look at it with calm consideration. He put his hand to the wound, now bleeding freely, and it came away black and wet. For the first time that night, his expression betrayed itself. Misaki caught her breath.

 

He was smiling.

 

His mouth made a shape, but Misaki could not catch the sound, if there was one. In the next moment he closed his eyes and let himself fall, with an awful finality, to the ground.


End file.
